Stephen Sondheim is the most celebrated American Broadway composer.  His work as lyricist and composer spanned 60 years and included some of the best-loved melodies and musicals ever produced.  He was a gifted child who studied piano and organ at an early age and wrote his first musical at age 15.  He attended Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  Upon graduation in 1950 he received a fellowship to continue his studies in New York.  Some of his early teachers included Oscar Hammerstein II and Milton Babbitt.   

His first jobs after school utilized his writing skills.  He wrote for a television series in Hollywood, and was the lyricist for Bernstein’s West Side Story, and Jule Styne’s Gypsy.  His first show as lyricist and composer, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, from 1962, won a Tony Award for best musical and ran for over two years.  Later successes included best musical Tony Award winners Company (1971), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), and Into the Woods (1988).  In all he was awarded eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, and an Academy Award.  He was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 1993, a received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.     

His influence on Broadway continues today.  His unique lyrics, often imitating normal speech patterns are imitated in more recent composers’ works.  The characters he chose in leading roles were non-traditional, including older women, married couples already in (and out of) love, criminals, murderers, and others who may struggle to be noticed.  Through Sondheim’s incredible talents of humanizing these characters, an audience leaves the theatre identifying with a character they normally would never connect with.  Suddenly, under Sondheim’s pen, musical theatre was new again.  Rodgers and Hammerstein broke the mold of song and dance filled revues, and Sondheim took the storytelling up another notch.    

He mentored numerous stars of today and conducted numerous interviews in his last years.  He once said he usually wrote while lying down.  Sondheim rarely talked about his personal life, keeping that information very private. Sondheim never stopped working.  He continued to write and compose all the way up to his death at the age of 91 in November of last year.    

 -Notes by Kevin Lodge